The Grindberg-Pacella duo are running for student body president and vice president, respectively.

Chase Ouse Grindberg, a North Dakota State student studying crop and weed sciences, is running for student body president because he said he has always loved NDSU and wants to help provide students with skills that will improve them.

Marisa Pacella, who studies hospitality and tourism management, said that serving means everything to her.

As far as their platform goes, theirs has three branches: outreach, technology and experience.

Outreach consists of three main points: the mentor-outreach program, lobbying for student interests and reinforcing safety initiatives.

The mentorship program pairs students with mentors in the event that they don’t have access to one. This acts as a way to guide students and to reinforce learning. The lobbying for their interests consists of listening to students and acting on the feedback they receive from the student body. They hope that this reinforces the student voice at NDSU.

The third aspect of outreach is to reinforce safety initiatives. Pacella said that although NDSU has done a “great job” at providing safety measures for students, she wants to ensure that they are doing everything they can.

Under the technology category, the candidates hope to increase interactive technology on campus, like smartboards, improve cellphone and internet reception throughout campus, which they’ve already begun working on with the IT department, and to increase technology in the Memorial Union to provide students with more places to print and to create more access to academic material.

The experience category accounts for the cost saving textbook point, which continues the use of open resources within general education courses as proposed by the current Wenzel-Mastel administration, suggestions by professors to know which textbooks will actually be used in their course and providing some non-essential textbooks in the library.

Within the experience category also includes the establishment of a class toolkit specialized for every major. The candidates want this to become a reality so that students have access to resources in one place to guide students through their major. Their last point is to create advising reviews so students can review their advisers.

The candidates plan to continue to advocate against unnecessary student fee increases and to keep lines of communication open with students when a fee increase is being considered.

The candidates would like to remind the student body to contact them with any questions or concerns.

Powley and Patton

While Carter Powley, studying social science education, runs for student body president and Dallas Patton, studying mechanical engineering, runs for student body vice president with less of a history within student government on their side, they are no less confident.

Their basic message to the student body is to communicate the message that you don’t need to be an elite to be in student government or run for a student government position. In fact, they’re trying to break into the private clique that they see within student government.

For their platform, they use the acronym LEAD (Leadership, Ethics, Achieve and Development) to represent their ideals. “Instead of promoting promises, we’re promoting our ideals,” Powley said.

When it comes to the leadership aspect of their platform, they qualify themselves and their campaign as student focused. They encourage students to know their student senate members, and they hope to make the student government office approachable as they said that the students they’ve spoken to would feel uncomfortable walking into the student government office.

Under the ethics branch of their platform includes being transparent and clear with the student body, fair distribution of funds based on merit for student organizations and posting meeting minutes, as they mentioned the minutes from this year’s meetings have not been posted since October. (Pacella mentioned in her interview that this is due to broken links, but that the minutes are available upon request.)

As far as achievement, the candidates want to provide the student body with a competitive drive to get them more involved in a campus organization. After seeing the lack of opposition during last year’s race for student body president and vice president, they realized there was a problem. They want to change the status quo and hope that students will feel at home on their campus.

Last but not least, the development portion of their platform involves helping students develop themselves, providing life skills through programs and classes at the university, offering leadership training and encouraging students to take advantage of opportunities offered through the university.

On top of their platform, they plan to eliminate frivolous spending, starting with their campaign. All excess funds from their campaign will be donated to a charity of the student body’s choice.

The candidates would like to remind the student body that if they wish to follow their campaign their tag is @PowleyPattonNDSU.